[ebolla]

when at home i can easily automatically detect mine and my neighbors networks thru the menubar icon in OS X

but at my university my ibook can never automatically detect the networks in range
i have to go into the network preferences and manually type in the network name(after i hunt around the building to find someone who knows the network name) under 'join a specific network'
i dont have to use a pasword - just the name is enough

so why is it that the networks arent being automatically detected like my home networks?
and how can i make the networks automatically detected?
is there some for of software that can help me find the networks that arent listed?

because its gonna be a real pain to run around campus trying to manually setup the different wireless networks in everybuilding on campus

[ghporter]

It's probably "SSID broadcast" that is keeping you from seeing the school networks. While your home network (and your neighbors' too) are broadcasting your network names (technically the "Service Set ID"), the school network is not. This gives a level of stealth to those networks, which can help keep them from being hijacked by every Tom, Dick and Harry with a wireless card-but not for long. Don't be surprised when the school institutes a username/password requirement on those networks.

[ebolla]

is there anyway to bypass that so i can see the networks or at least find out if a network exists in the building?

most people are ignorant of the wireless networks so it is a struggle to even find out if one exists and even more of a pain to find someone who can help me connect. i'm probably one of only a handfull of people at the university who uses wireless and i'm guessing the inconvienience of connecting is part of the reason why.

[danielb0101]

Search Veriontracker.com for "MacStumbler".

The program constantly searches for available wireless networks and gives some info for networks in range.

[aaanorton]

It's probably "SSID broadcast" that is keeping you from seeing the school networks. While your home network (and your neighbors' too) are broadcasting your network names (technically the "Service Set ID"), the school network is not.

Agreed. There are a couple things I can think of that you could do, though, to deal with this. One is to just keep asking and getting the SSIDs for all the buildings/locations you would need. Then, for each of these SSIDs add a new location in Networking pref pane and specify it in the Airport tab there. This would allow you to simply pull down the Apple menu > Location and choose the approprate SSID.
The other apporach (or an additional one) would be something like iStumbler. There are a few of these things out there. Search versiontracker.com for 802.11 or something.

OT EDIT: Anybody know why bold tags aren't closing?

[tooki]

Because your tags are nested wrong. Tag pairs can't overlap. They have to be in "concentric" pairs, like so:

[x] [y] [z] foo [/z] [/y] [/x] bar


your text is like this:

[x] [y] foo [/x] [/y] bar

which the parser can't deal with... it sees an opening x, then an opening y, then an orphaned (thus, ignored) closing x, and then a closing y. No non-orphaned closing x is present.

I left your code unedited so you can see for yourself.

tooki

P.S. this is standard behavior for HTML as well

[aaanorton]

Originally posted by tooki:
Because your tags are nested wrong. Tag pairs can't overlap. They have to be in "concentric" pairs, like so:

Thanks!

[ghporter]

ebolla,

You could always ask the school network people for which buildings have wireless networks, and what they're called.